Digital Download Pricing Increases

Generally around 15 to 20%. Sometimes higher if they’re having a sale.

Thanks

more than 90% of hdtracks albums are not available for Europe and the catalog is less bigger than Qobuz. But prices seem sometimes attractive. I once tried to register with an imaginary us adress. But finally they could see i was in Europe…

If I try the US site I keep getting redirected to the UK Site!

You need a IP program that hides your address, but don’t tell anyone. :scream:

I use one called Hide My Ass.

With out it redirects us to an Australian site that doesn’t exist.

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At the risk of thread ‘drift’, I thought I would ask you guys how much music you have sitting either on your shelves or in your server that you’ve acquired over the last couple of years but haven’t seriously listened to?

I have recently made a conscious decision to really cut back on new acquisitions and to go through my collection (4,000+ albums) properly, listening to those hundreds of albums which somehow slipped throgh the net and got pushed aside by the new ones dropping on the mat!

I reckon 12 months of this will fund an extra long haul holiday!

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I have also notified the price increases with Qobuz, also being on Sublime level. And to echo the last poster, yes I am one of the guys having too much music and not being able to listen everything.

Good point timmo1341, but I probably have more stuff on vinyl than CD/digital download (I hated CDs), so in many cases I may be buying hi res versions of things on vinyl (yes CD convenience), and I do tend to audition via streaming and buy things I really enjoy, clearly those who purchase are in the minority these days.

There are indeed many things purchased we don’t play often if at all, some of these may not have been that good to begin with (bar a good single perhaps) or haven’t stood the test of time, at least we can audition by streaming in many cases now, I guess I just don;t like being reliant on internet and streams rather than having a local copy.

Digital downloadds and streaming to a greater extend help us reduce the shelves of CDs/LPs etc we used to have, and I suspect it also makes phsyical media far less desirable to thieves.

The more I look there are still many items of good value with Sublime (but not without), and it’s some not all CD quality downloads that are pricey. Perhaps it’s new releases on the whole that are becoming expensive, or back catalogue items not readily purchasable on CD. I’ve certainly bought a few old albums in hi res on release and the prices have dropped a few months later as they do in stores.

Agreed, I’m continually discovering “new” music in my own collect, stuff I’ve played once and forgotten about.

I don’t see why download prices are so high. There is no physical product to package up and post. All they have to do is make the album available on their website and wait for us to log in pay up and download it, they don’t exactly have to do a lot! And why do so many albums have no digital booklet available? Generally I won’t buy if there is no booklet .

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Supply and demand. The volume of download sales has fallen through the floor.

The point made by @Fenderman is that there is almost zero cost to make the album available for download. The mechanism for delivering a Metadata’d (is that a word - sorry please don’t answer that!) album in FLAC can be entirely automated so it really is a very low cost option. Any sales are in profit immediately.

I’m not sure that maintaining servers, a retail website, and all the associated operations required is ‘almost zero cost’, they consume a lot of energy, and require as much care and maintenance as any other online retail operation. As consumers move increasingly to streaming subscriptions, download sellers will be feeling the squeeze, and may well be struggling to make money.
I suppose it’s also possible that Qobuz are hoping to push people towards paying for a streaming sub. It’s a far more lucrative market in many areas, not just audio, especially when you think of all the people who pay for it, and use it rarely or not at all.

Exactly this. It is not and never has been zero cost. There are economies of scale but they disappear as streaming continues to dominate.

I never said it was zero cost. They already have the file that had to be paid for otherwise they would not be able to stream it and the cost of running a couple of HTTPS servers isn’t that high.
It could well be a push towards a streaming subscription though.

I’m always baffled why people equate the cost of providing a service with the cost of offering it. The service is worth what people are prepared to pay - this may be quite unrelated to the cost of provision.

Qobuz has less of 5 employees, with a “ chiffre d’affaires” of around 700k.

That explains a lot when it comes to their customer service (or lack if it!)

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Tidal has lost the streaming market vs Spotify and Apple. In 2017, Tidal was near recession.